The Whore, the Mortician and the Corpse

[Breda Dreaughan]

She went cold. Murder. Inside her safe haven. Had it been random, or had it been directed at Jolayna? Would it happen again?

"Of course," she said quickly, her voice hoarse with nervousness. "Unless the patron objects. Should I warn the others? Or should we keep this a secret? I can tell them you are too busy to cremate her yet." She paused for a moment. "The patron might actually buy that as well."

Her eyes widened, as a sudden thought hit her like a bucket of could water. "Or do you think he could have…?" That boy? It was true that you should never trust in appearances, especially in here, but still. It felt inconceivable. "You asked about drugs. Was she drugged? Poisoned?"

She realized she was blabbering. She drew a deep breath, attempting to compose herself. "I'm sorry. Let me know if there is anything I can do."

[Myron Fernsby]

Myron was no policeman. He wasn't an investigator. He was a scholar who had dreams of becoming a forefront expert on the matter of biology in humans and elves. In order to do that, he needed the freedom and the capacity to study bodies. Unsurprisingly most people did not like the thought of their body or the body of their loved ones being cut open. To what purpose did it serve? Most of the world operated by use of magic, slowly corrupting it until -- one day -- the precious undefineable core that made them belong to the very world would be swallowed up whole by the unholiness that was magical ability.

Just like he had. But he would not give up. All he needed was a chance, whether or not he was qualified to take that chance. He was no master of what caused deaths; he doubtled if anyone truly was, even in the present advanced age of the world! Instruments such as he needed for his task were a specialty trade that might as well be weighted in gold for the expenses he had gone through. Even then,

His anxiety made his senses slip past his control. They spiralled out, giving him smells and sounds and sights he didn't want. He pushed away to pace along the wall furthest from Breda, no matter that the room was not very comfortable for pacing: its focus was on fucking, not thought.

And that thought made him blush.

He had to answer her questions, though his mind tried to spin him away from them in his nervousness and uncertainty. He could think all night about how he wasn't truly qualified, about how he could only connect these things because now he had a pattern. He couldn't tell her that he only knew what he knew because an otherwise apparently normal body shouldn't be dead. He couldn't even be sure that it was the needle marks that'd caused it.

He was running on a hunch.

"I'm not -- I'm not sure yet. I can tell by the mark on her arm that a . . . sophisticated needle had been used on her. The type that only a wealthy person would have. She was otherwise healthy, but --" Was it wise to talk about that? His thoughts bled into his face, giving him a pinched and worried expression. "I need your permission to better. . .examine the body for irregularities."

There was the other thing. The other thing he should tell her. The one that he felt excited about but didn't want to, because it meant that finally he could take a step in the right direction.

Suddenly his feet stopped moving, and he was left staring at a spot in the wall that looked as if it had been repaired from some sort of damage. The texture was different. The color was slightly off. Carefully, he said, "I. . .I only noticed it because I have had two other clients with similarly marked deceased. They too were ill-fortuned women.

"I'm not sure that there won't be more."

[Breda Dreaughan]

The mortician's words did not make her feel any better, but her slightly rusty survival instinct was starting to kick in, bringing concentrated calmness with it.

"Ill-fortuned women, huh," she said, in a faint attempt to briefly escape the topic. "I'm guessing you don't meet much with the truly ill-fortuned, if you consider us to fall into that category. Then again, I guess I don't really mix with the well-fortuned. Or whatever the word is."

She tried to dry her sweaty palms in the short hem of her dress. "So you want to poke around Jolayna's body? That's okay, but if you do something disrespectful, please cover it up. Some of the girls here might disapprove. Personally, I've shared a roof with people who upon meeting a dead human body would be inclined to eat it."

"But what do we do meanwhile, if there is some sort of serial killer around? We can't start refusing customers at random."

[Myron Fernsby]

Myron shifted. He lifted his chin, moved his feet a little further apart and then closer together, looked towards Breda but not at her: he was uncomfortable. Breda had taken his words in a way he had not meant them to be taken, but he saw no graceful way to recover the situation. He let her statement past unchallenged, and cleared his throat.

He was temporarily shocked into further silence at her musing of meeting cannibals. He tried to hide his reaction, but he was surprised. It seemed such an impossibility in such modern times that cannibals would be skulking around a city bold as brass. Certain enough Marn was no beacon of forward thinking, but it was not entirely wrapped in barbarism, either.

"Pay attention to your clients, and your surroundings. I will. . .well, I might take illness for a few days and my schedule will be cleared so I can give this my utmost attention. If you see anyone unusual, or anyone brandishing a steel needle, please do bring it to my attention. If there are any more bodies. . ."

He turned grim, his earlier discomfort evaporating with familiar ground. "You must contact me immediately. Not all of your dead may necessarily be caused by this thing, but I would rather act in safety than have cause for regret later. Do you have any questions?"

[Breda Dreaughan]

Breda shook her head. It felt odd that this unfamiliar man should be her repository, but it was too late to start arguing. Besides, none of the girls could really be helpful, and the guard, well, sometimes they took the girls' accusations seriously, sometimes they didn't. The undertaker already did take her seriously, no persuasion required.

She felt cold in her skimpy dress. "I'll keep my eyes open. Don't think they'll let me snoop around prospective dead bodies, though. But I'll let you know."

She stood up, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around herself. "Well, that's it, I suppose. You'll let me know what you find?"

And at that exact moment, someone screamed.

[Myron Fernsby]

Myron had started to nod, had opened his mouth to say something when the scream interrupted the both of them. He froze, his body's improved fight or flight surging through him with a suddenness that took his breath away. The color of his eyes flickered as the scream broke off. He could hear the texture in that scream, smell Breda's emotions and other smells -- other things -- his pupils dilated, and he found his body responding in a most inappropriate manner. Blood rushed to his face -- which, he found, he would rather have than the southerly direction it'd gone in -- and he turned abruptly from Breda to shuffle towards the door.

Myron was not a brave man. Given a choice he would much rather stay put and let the guards Breda had spoken of handle the manner. He'd moved before proper thought had kicked in. His steps faltered as he considered going out into the hallway, but he had already committed in lieu of his uncontrolled social gaffe. He opened the door.

Where were his manners? His face was prickling with heat, and he gave Breda an awkward half bow. "Ahhh, excuse me. I shall see. . ."

It occurred to him that women sometimes screamed during sex. But no -- no, there had been fear in that voice. Honest fear. He had heard it with his other self, the buried and unholy self. The self he wasn't supposed to have. His eyes shifted from the hallway -- no one else was packing in to investigate the why of it -- back into the room. "Err," he said, his voice weakening. He couldn't just say something was wrong, not without awkward explanations. "I-is that normal?"

It had taken roughly fourteen seconds from Myron to go from an assured master of his craft (or as close as a master as he could get) to the equivalent of a young schoolboy caught peeking at the girls. Which he hadn't ever done. Ever. He tried to keep his body surreptitiously half turned away from Breda. He was casual about it, surely. He casually looked back out into the hallway, buying himself more time. He tried to shut out the smells, and as his mind desperately flailed about for a solution, his thoughts landed on his mother.

Oh. That helped.

[Breda Dreaughan]

Breda was standing in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself. Yes, there was often a lot of noise in the house. Screaming was unusual, though. It was difficult to fake convincingly. There was the "I'm being mistreated, send help" scream that you heard every once in a while, but this one was, at least to Breda's nervous ears, closer to the "I'm dying, I'm dying" variety.

There was a sound of the porter stomping up the creaky stairs, and rushing to the room a bit further down. "Halla," Breda said, with a tense, urgent voice. "She's new. She's just started." She retreated further away from the door.

There was some more noise, and some more screaming from Halla. Then somebody, or possibly several somebodies, were running down the stairs. The nervous silence returned.

"Um." Breda said. "Do you think that was…?" She cleared her throat. "It didn't sound like she's dead. Not yet, anyway."

[Myron Fernsby]

"If it's. . ." Breda's response, and thoughts of mother-dearest were enough to ice Myron's blood. His face was still hot, but it was. . .manageable. At least his instincts' clamoring for the wrong sort of attention had calmed somewhat. The thought of another dead body was another -- and perhaps it would be a blessing if the young woman was dead before she could experience the --

That was a very inappropriate thought. Myron had not gotten involved to judge the women on their choices. It wasn't his business.

"If it's what I think it is," he said, pushing the door further open, "then it's important I see her." Or her body. "Please."

He held out his hand to the dwarf.

[Breda Dreaughan]

She grasped his hand after a moment's hesitation. Her fingers were cold and her heart was racing.

The Matron, a voluptuous, black-haired human in her sixties, stormed up the stairs and into Halla's room. A couple of doors ajarred, and nervous eyes peeked in the hallway. From the room by the stairs, a well-dressed man hurried out, hastily pulling his jacket on his shoulders.

"She's not going to let you in," Breda said quietly. "The Matron, I mean. You're a customer. Unless you pay her extra, and even then she's probably going to want to be there. She can get rather protective, it's not good business to get your girls killed."

A scrawny elfin girl peeked out of the room on the other side of the hallway, glanced at Myron and raised an eyebrow at Breda. The dwarf gave her an uninformative one-shoulder shrug.

"It might be difficult to get out of this without explaining them what's going on," she muttered to the undertaker.

[Myron Fernsby]

Explain? Myron exhaled something that may or may not have been a word not fit for polite company, and abruptly stepped back and shut the door. Yes, maybe he could help the girl. Maybe. But if he did and then things got turned over to the Guard too soon his opportunity would be lost before it was begun. He couldn't afford to be labeled a quack, or a freak, or delusional. For one, it would hurt Grave endings. Then there might be damage to the Fernsby name, and his mother --

Wincing, he drew back from Breda with an apologetic twist to his lips. The alluring scents went back to being muted, and he ran a hand through his hair. "No. Not yet. It's too soon. We'll have to wait. If there's a body, then I can deal with it. Can we find out? If it's nothing. Not that I am implying danger to one of your colleagues is nothing, but for the sake of . . .rather, in relation to what has been going on it does indeed amount to nothing, but that does not mean any of your lives are nothing."

He stopped talking, and glanced back at the door. He bit his lip.

[Breda Dreaughan]

Breda squared her shoulders, which made unaccustomed muscles twinge in surprise. "I'll go. The worst she'll do is drive me away, and my curiosity won't raise questions. Stay here."

Without waiting for a reply, she sneaked to the hallway and knocked on Halla's door. The Matron opened.

"Breda," she said, tense expression softening somewhat. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to see if Halla is okay. What happened?"

The Matron stepped aside. "Come in."

Halla was sitting on the bed, thankfully upright. She gave Breda a weak smile as the dwarf went to sit next to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Did he hit you?"

The girl shook her head. "He had a needle. He said he had something that would make me feel better." She gave the Matron a hesitant glance. "I told him that he could make me feel better himself."

The Matron gave her an encouraging smile. "Well done. Did he attack you?"

"He tried, but I got the bed between us. I was scared and I screamed. He ran when he heard the porter coming up the stairs."

Breda suppressed a sigh of relief. The Matron shook her head. "Rats! They cook up something they think will sell, then they come here to test it on us! Changers know what it could have done to you."

She glanced at Breda. "Do you have a customer?"

The dwarf nodded hesitantly. "Um, yes, but he's rather lost the mood. Afraid of violence, apparently."

"Go back to him. Halla, you're taking rest of the night off. I want you to describe the man to the porter tomorrow, he is not coming back here again."

Halla nodded, discreetly wiping off a tear. Breda stood up and gently kissed the other girl's hair. "I'll come to check on you in the morning."

She returned hastily to her room, closed the door and leaned on it heavily. The excess adrenalin was making her stomach hurt. She would feel this tomorrow.

"She's okay," she said to Myron. "The man wanted to inject her with something, but didn't succeed. The Matron thinks it was a drug dealer looking for a guinea pig. She doesn't seem to think it has anything to do with Jolayna. Jolayna never said anything about needles before she died. Halla will describe the man to the porter. I'll try to find out what she says."

[Myron Fernsby]

Myron's face was considering as he watched Breda go. Not that he had much of anything precisely against dwarves or whores, beyond the -- beyond what he thought of them. That thought was, in and of itself, lame. He grimaced, left alone to the room and his own head, and struggled with a desire to simply write a note and return to his shop. Then again, he could not say whether or not Breda could read. Marn certainly indulged itself with an educational program free for any citizen to attend, but from his (admittedly poor) experience, those who were considered citizens seemed rather . . . select. And mostly human. Therefore, he could not be sure that a dwarf who had taken up with a rather uneducated profession had any formal education whatsoever, and any note he left to her might require a second party. She was not stupid, no matter her uncertain pedigree, which meant she might err on the side of caution and wait to meet him again rather than involve a third party.

Breda's return saw Myron stuck in a stew of what-ifs. His indecision had lead him to the realm of headache starters, and as a result he looked upon her reentrance into the room with some relief, and not a little amount of cautious happiness. Not that he would have called the emotion happy by any means, but it was better than wandering around the room mired in arguments with himself. Particularly when said arguments were all speculation.

"We can't be sure -- what did you say to her?" If Breda had spilled the beans about Myron's suspicions, he would be quite displeased. He decided this even as he closed his eyes, preparing himself for the worst.

Breda was not stupid, he reminded himself. He hoped.

[Breda Dreaughan]

"I said nothing," Breda replied calmly. She glanced around - nothing seemed to have been touched. On second thought, it was unlikely this man would dare to touch anything here unless absolutely necessary. And to be fair, the room didn't hold any great secrets. "I had them tell me what had happened. I did say that you were turned off by the racket, though, so please play along."

She thought for a moment, head tilted to one side. "The girls like to speculate, though, not that anyone takes them seriously. But some people might think it's weird that the undertaker who took care of Jolayna was here when Halla was attacked. I think the porter is the only one who knows who you are, so try to be inconspicuous when you leave."

She crossed her arms tightly across her stomach. "Can we move quickly with this? I mean, maybe he tries elsewhere next time, now that he was almost caught here, but I'd feel better if we got rid of him. Or at least knew a bit more."

[Myron Fernsby]

Relief, ah -- it spilled from Myron in a gusty sigh. He stopped moving save to look back at her, though his eyes soon wandered away. Turned off by the racket? It was ridiculous. It was so ridiculous he had nothing to say to it but a nervous twitch of his lips into something that may have resembled a smile. As if he'd been aroused at all -- well, not normally. Not in that way. Heat spiked up his neck, and the smile vacated his face. He needed to control his other self better, so stupid little things like that did not happen. There was no place in his life for it, and besides that it was wholly wrong.

Breda's voice caught him back from the dark place his thoughts had gone to, and he looked back at her without thinking. "Weird? Why would it be weird? Surely even a mortician can -- " Myron shut his mouth and felt the heat fully infuse his face. Being in a whorehouse was not where a gentleman should be, and the whole evening had been odd. Unusual. He hadn't been trained for subterfuge, or investigations of any kind. He clenched his hands to keep them from fidgeting, and tried to regain the cool detachment worthy of the Fernsby name.

"Better if we could follow the man now, if at all possible. I can only do so much with the present information." He didn't even know what to do with the present information. He was so far out of his league. He looked towards the door. "Do you think you could find out what the man looks like now?"

[Breda Dreaughan]

Breda made an annoyed gesture at Myron's unfinished sentence. Did the man not operate at all among the living? Did he not know how much people liked to talk? Logic or reason had nothing to do with it. They would find the connections. Even connections that weren't there.

The man's next comment made her jaw drop. "You want to chase after him? He'll be miles away by now. And he'll still have his needles."

There was a slam of the door and the Matron's footsteps in the hallway. "She's gone," Breda said softly. "I can go back to Halla and ask her. She's my friend, I don't see why she wouldn't talk to me. Are you sure about this?"